The Ones Left Behind
After an hour, I gave in and texted again.
Did you have supper? It was after breakfast, mid-evening over there.
No reply. My heart beat faster, irrationally. His friend Amber was there too. She’d learned Vietnamese, he’d said.
The phone chimed. I jumped for it.
“Is that Stan?” my husband asked from the kitchen.
“Yeah.”
He came over to read the reply.
Yep!
A picture popped up of a glowing building and a lotus flower fountain.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said. “My lucky little boy. Still, I worry.”
“He’ll be fine. After all, he’s nine now. He’s not a baby anymore.”
*
This Friday Fictioneers story is very late, but since Rochelle chose my picture this week as the prompt, I wanted to make sure I wrote one. I took this picture in Ho Chi Minh City when I was there on business a few months ago. I wrote a kid’s book about my travels called Stanley and Amber in Southeast Asia, about a kid and his unicorn friend traveling around Southeast Asia (it started out as a Flat Stanley project for my niece; thus, the name). So, I thought I’d write this from the parent’s perspective.
The Green-Walled Tower 